Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1: Cosmic Avengers

Monday, January 11, 2016

Premise: The Guardians of the Galaxy, plus fan-favorite Iron Man, are up against a coalition of galactic powers with ambiguous goals. One goal is clear, though: Quill's father, lord of the Spartax Empire, wants him home... or dead. Collects Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1, #1-3, GotG: Tomorrow's Avengers #1

I enjoyed reading this, but only a few days later, not much of it stayed with me. The art is nice, modern comic art. Sticking Iron Man into the story feels more than a bit like an obvious marketing ploy, although his snark adds a fun dimension to the book.

Issue #0.1 is a retelling/revamping of the origin story for Peter Quill (aka Star-Lord). It’s fairly well done and probably the most interesting bit of the book. The main plot of the book concerns King J-Son and a council made up of rulers of all the major galactic powers. They discuss the jurisdiction of Earth, and J-Son seems to be using the others to set the Guardians up for a fall. The team, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what's really going on and escape galactic forces while simultaneously protecting the earth.

That's the plot of only about half the ‘pages’ of the book, because I have the digital version. The other half ("Tomorrow’s Avengers #1") is a short series of digital comics: one for each member of the Guardians except Quill, putting a spotlight on each character and telling what they were doing just before the events of the main story.

These are pretty good, although it might make more sense to read them before the main story, since that's when they take place. Each short is done by a different artist.

This might be the first digital comic book that I've read that was built for the form. It's effectively a cross between a traditional comic and a flip-book. Many times, very little changes between panels, just adding a speech bubble or changing a character's position. You could also think of it at times like animation that is only keyframes, that you're manually advancing. It was really interesting to read, although it took a little to get used to at first.

Overall this was fun but nothing groundbreaking or incredibly compelling.

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